1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of measuring agglutinating reaction by checking an aggultinates pattern caused by immunological agglutinating reaction, and more particularly to a method of measuring corpuscle-agglutinating reaction for determination of blood group and for detecting antibodies and antigens based on an agglutinating pattern of blood corpuscles.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As an example of the prior art method of determining blood group, the method disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 3,883,308 granted to Claude Matte (to be referred to as "Matte", hereinafter) will be briefly reviewed as shown in FIG. 1. The method of Matte comprises steps of pouring certain amounts of a centrifugated suspension having 2 to 5% of blood corpuscles to be analyzed and a specific antiserum into a reaction vessel having a curved bottom of brandy glass shape, agitating the suspension and the antiserum, keeping the reaction vessel standstill, effecting centrifugation by rotating a holder carrying the reaction vessels about the axis of the holder, for instance at a revolving speed of about 1,000 rpm, applying a special high-speed shake-up to the reaction vessel so as to disperse the precipitated blood corpuscles, agitating the reaction vessel comparatively slowly so as to collect agglutinates at the central portion of the bottom of the reaction vessel for producing an agglutinates pattern at the bottom of the reaction vessel and detecting the agglutinates pattern by photometry. This method is based on a phenomenon that, after the aforementioned shake-up and comparatively slow agitation, agglutinates combined by the agglutination are quickly collected at the central portion of the reaction vessel while non-agglutinated particles are dispersed again in the suspension and not collected at the central portion of the reaction vessel, within a short period of time.
As shown in FIG. 2, there is another prior art method of measuring agglutinating reaction based on the aforementioned phenomenon, which method uses reaction vessels of test tube like shape and a centrifuge adapted to receive the reaction vessels for effecting centrifugal precipitation, so as to facilitate collection of blood corpuscles at the bottom of each of the reaction vessels. After the centrifugal precipitation, the reaction vessel is shaken up at a high speed for dispersing combined blood corpuscles, and then the agglutinates are collected at the bottom of the reaction vessel for producing an agglutinates pattern.
In each of the prior art methods of measurement, the centrifugal precipitation is applied for the purposes of accumulating corpuscles to reduce distances between adjacent corpuscles and to facilitate occurrence of the agglutinating reaction. In actual devices for carrying the aforementioned prior art methods, to ensure a high efficiency of measurement, it is necessary to effect the centrifugal precipitation on a plurality of reaction vessels at one time. On the other hand, to improve the reliability of the result of the measurement, it is necessary to carry out the measurement on different reaction vessels under identical conditions. To this end, the reaction vessels must be disposed on one circle around one center of rotation. Therefore, to treat a large number of reaction vessels at one time, a large centrifuge with a large diameter becomes necessary, and an increase in the size of the centrifuge becomes inevitable. However, at the place where such measurement of the agglutinating reaction is carried out, there are usually a number of other measuring or analyzing instruments installed, so that reduction of instruments or devices for such measurement of agglutinating reaction to the smallest possible size is desirable. To meet this need for size reduction, it has been practiced to dispose a large number of the reaction vessels in two or three circular rows, each row having a circle along which the reaction vessels are disposed. In this arrangement, however, the outer circular row generates a larger centrifugal force than that of the inner circular row, so that the uniformity of the centrifugal force is lost and the aggregation of corpuscles becomes uneven, resulting in a loss of uniformity of the agglutinating reactions leading to a possible large error in the measurement which is a major shortcoming of the prior art. Since the result of measurement on the immunological agglutinating reaction may affect the life of a patient, the possibility of the aforementioned error must be minimized by all means.
Besides, to improve the measuring efficiency and to prevent any human error from entering into the measurement, A photoelectric means for detecting the agglutinates pattern is desirable, but it is difficult in the prior art to detect the agglutinates pattern at the same position with that for the centrifugal precitation, i.e., the position of effecting the reaction, because the point where the reaction vessel stops after rotation for the centrifugal precipitation is uncertain. Thus, it has been necessary to transfer the reaction vessel from the position of centrifugal precipitation to another position for detecting the agglutinates pattern. Accordingly, another disadvantage is caused in that the measurement requires an additional step and additional man power for the transfer and extra floor spaces for separate centrifugation and detection of agglutinates pattern.